When jewellery designer Kaabia Grewal hosted a Grecian bachelorette trip in Mykonos in July, she posted pictures of guests wearing custom-made Shivan & Narresh ensembles on Instagram (the designers themselves were on the guest list). Perhaps actor Sonam Kapoor’s May wedding—with #sonamkishaadi grabbing 68,800 posts—filled with decadent couture designs had set the tone.

An Instagram campaign by Shivan & Narresh for their ‘Eden Noir’ collection

Instagram, launched in 2010 and acquired by Facebook Inc. for $1 billion (around ₹7,250 crore today) in 2012, is one of the world’s most popular social media apps. During a panel discussion titled Fashion On Instagram held in Delhi in July, Sandeep Bhushan, director, Facebook (India and South Asia), said, “Fashion is the third-most followed category by young people globally on Instagram, behind music and entertainment.” With a worldwide community of over one billion users, and 25 million businesses, the photo- and video-sharing app has changed the way we live, interact and shop. What is its digital charisma and can brands get famous by just getting on the bandwagon?

A level playing fieldAn audience ready to scroll and shop has created unprecedented opportunities for businesses. While the internet strips shopping of the touch-and-feel experience, Instagram’s ability to create evocative stories and user-generated-and-curated reportage of runway shows, collection and campaign previews and behind-the-scenes stories, infuses the fashion industry with a new dynamism.

Today, most Indian fashion brands use the platform proactively, while Kolkata-based couturier Sabyasachi Mukherjee has been an Instagram trailblazer since 2015. His eponymous brand has seven Instagram accounts, including a core account (started in 2015 with 2.6 million followers), city-specific accounts and one dedicated to “Brides of Sabyasachi”. The designer’s Firdaus line debuted on Instagram in 2016 and his jewellery line followed suit in 2017. “A couture show is not meant to be a democratic release. But I wanted to flip the concept—do it in a way that it goes to every single household,” says the designer. “Gone are the days when you could build luxury with the concept of distance. Today, it has to be more inclusive.”

A screengrab from Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s official Instagram account

Raul Rai, co-founder of lifestyle brand Nicobar, believes their audience has been built largely on Instagram—50% of their customers discovered the brand via social media. Its reach also means that geography doesn’t restrict shopping. Shivan Bhatiya and Narresh Kukreja have tapped markets like South Africa, Singapore, Jakarta and West Asia, courtesy their eponymous brand’s Instagram account.

Indie brands too capitalize on the platform. Carol’s Shop & Tea Room, selling vintage clothing and collectibles from Nagaland, has worked purely off Instagram from the start, taking orders directly through the portal. “The interaction with the customer is more on a personal level,” says model Carol Humtsoe, who founded the e-shop in 2016 (she is now putting together a small brick-and-mortar shop in Dimapur).

An Instagram post from Carol’s Shop & Tea Room

From grid to galleryThe 3×1 grid on Instagram (the display format on user profiles) has become a dazzling visual playground for brands. When formulating campaigns, a sizeable amount of planning is dedicated to Instagram and brands are upping their content strategy to establish a distinct voice that, they assume, will eventually lead to sales. Arjun Sawhney, managing director of communications agency TCCGGD, believes Instagram creates communities and enables a strong point of view. “Social media helps create brand awareness, in the right tone, and garner an audience, but it is not necessarily a driver of sales,” he says. “A focused, relevant audience with the economic potential to engage is critical to a brand on social media. It is not just your content game; it is the stories you are pushing.”

During the New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2016, the Tommy Hilfiger show witnessed the “InstaPit”, an influencer-only section with claims to maximum visibility—#TommyFall16 and #TommyHilfiger reached 137,170,550 people on Instagram (according to marketing company Pixlee).

More recently, American fast-fashion brand, Fashion Nova, has been in the news with 13.2 million Instagram followers. The brand’s customers have generated volumes of content, including selfies with #NovaBabes, driving sales via micro-influencers and celebrity endorsements.

While worldwide influencers make or break businesses, in India, the trend remains nascent. Malika Verma Kashyap, founder of digital agency and online publication Border&Fall, says, “It is filled with many smaller players who are engaging brands, but the level of ‘influence’ is negligible whether it be a stylist, designer, blogger or other. Bollywood remains the strongest influencer, and Sonam Kapoor reigns supreme with fashion brands.”

The evolution is rapidly underway, even if it hasn’t matured. “There is a shift in focus from bloggers with maximum follower count to creators of organic and original content with a targeted and niche followership, which, in turn, has given rise to a newer generation of thought leaders,” say designers Bhatiya and Kukreja.

For many brands, the platform is weighed down by the price of influencer marketing and Instagram’s reshuffled programming. What may have started as a democratic approach is now curated by algorithms that control the reach of posts. Meanwhile, consumers are also likely to get pickier about purchase triggers, gravitating towards authenticity and quality (over quantity) of posts. Rai keeps editorial and marketing teams separate to ensure an independent voice for Nicobar; while Mukherjee says: “I like to keep the voice intimate. Instagram allows you to connect directly with your consumer without a filter. The good, the bad and the ugly—it is all out there in honest, transparent communications.”

A digital economy of excessA Hootsuite Instagram stats-list suggests that 60% people discover products through Instagram, and 70% are likely to make a purchase on their mobiles. Earlier this year, Instagram expanded its shoppable posts’ feature to eight countries and enabled electronic payments for some companies. Now, Instagram is reportedly developing a stand-alone shopping application that may be called “IG Shopping”.

But the sense of immediacy combined with the need to own can drive impulsive purchases. Among the selfie-clicking generation, can an Instagrammer be “seen” in the same garment again?

Buyers swipe their cards on both sides of the fence: those who swear by online shopping and others who continue to prefer the traditional touch-and-feel purchases. New York-based brand strategy professional Tarana Mehta, who goes online for most of her purchases, sees Instagram as a “discovery platform”, finding new brands via influencers or ads. She has, like many others, bought into “the convenience of shifting the dressing room to the bedroom”. Kashyap, on the other hand, chooses not to shop on Instagram to avoid the “re-targeting algorithm” (an online code tracking customers to display ads relevant to their search habits).

Yet the platform’s ability to build a strong voice expands to those balancing the scales as well. Organizations like Fashion Revolution and Global Fashion Exchange are using the platform to start a global dialogue on fashion and enable consumer awareness. As consumers drive trends, a platform like Instagram, when not diluted with aggressive advertising and clickbait, can facilitate meaningful dialogues on fashion.

How do you go about getting a swimsuit customised to your tastes and body type? Shivan & Narresh are first designer brand to do so. Find out how…

The dapper designer duo is “selling confidence, not fancy bathing suits”. Shivan liked illustrating women in skimpy clothes, Narresh liked to paint with bold colours. Together they became the popular, and India’s first and only designer swimwear brand Shivan & Narresh. “Modest with cut and bold with a sense of colour” is their brand philosophy and they like to believe that it reflects the country’s cultural roots. Indian women are not built like European women, so it’s understood that they need a swimwear line that is made for their body type.

WHY
1. Based on the Indian consumer’s psychology, customisation has been key from the onset of Shivan & Narresh’s designs. They believe that in India, the consumers are spoilt for choice and there is a strong expectation to be able to custom-create something.

2. While in the West, women are forgiving of their bodies, in India women have for years hidden their bodies behind layers of clothing and with just a single layer, women begin to feel naked. There is a great deal of self-confidence involved in including a bathing suit in an Indian woman’s wardrobe.

3. You wear a bathing suit for yourself, not your friends – if you don’t love how you look in the mirror, you won’t buy it. So customisation has to be a part of their business plan to be sustainable.

4. Customisation within the ready-to-wear category gives risk-averse customers a chance to graduate into more evolved buyers, giving them the comfort zone to mature.

HOW

1. Ready-to-wear with micro-customisation via either colour or style.
Using a current available style as the base, you can add things like more coverage in the back, make the neck deeper, add straps, pads and underwires within the same style. Colour blocking, a trademark of the brand’s designs helps shift focus areas of the body away from weaker areas. Colour creates a mirage, and diagonal lines help the torso look slender.
It can be done online on www.shivanandnarresh.com or at a local store retailing their brand or at a pop-up in your city. (See upcoming city schedules below.)
There is a 20% customisation fee.

2. Their Handcraft service.
This is a one-of-a-kind piece, which will be only for you. You take an appointment with either designer (both may also be present) where they will take your measurements. A body suit (like a cat suit) will be made as per your measurements. You wear that and either designer sketches on the body suit in front of the mirror. You can guide them about what kind of a piece you would like and how this should be done. Then you sit with colour swatches and different quality of fabrics. You can choose from thin fabrics, experiencing something as light as second skin. Later the designers split open the bodysuit on the lines drawn, in mosaic puzzle pieces, using these pieces to make the pattern which comes back together like a glove. It becomes a perfect fit. Essentially in this case, everything is possible – it’s the purest form of body art. They say that they are the only swimwear brand in the world that practices this.
The process takes 4-6 weeks and involves 2-3 personalisation sittings.
It costs minimum 10 times the cost of a regular bathing suit.

WHERE
Each region has a different demand and all metros have customised swimsuits workshops. This also gives the designers insights into what works for different cities. For instance, in Bombay, where the emphasis is on healthier living, trikinis (one-piece with cutouts) and baring skin in the front are acceptable. In Delhi, where the purchases are lifestyle centric, they are experimental about the backs but not the fronts. Tier 2 cities, where there is great fashion hunger, are very experimental and accept the skimpiest of pieces.

THE EXPERIENCE
“I’ve actually had a couple of pieces designed by the duo. Bespoke products to me signify true luxury. Swimwear is one of those items of clothing where the fit and cut can make a world of a difference. The bespoke experience was addictive as I was advised on how to make my shoulders stand out, legs look longer and which colour combinations would work best on my skin. The other nice part is being able to make a couple of pieces that can be mixed, matched and layered to make different outfits for different occasions which comes in handy for a destination wedding or beach getaway. I’ve been utterly spoilt and can’t imagine having to buy swimwear off the rack!” – Amruda Nair, The Leela Hotels